Recover Lost Documents

According to a report, the credit card information of 19,000 British Internet users was exposed on Google search recently before being removed.

Elinor Mills states in her report for CNET News that it is not certain when and for how long the information was available to Google searchers, although most of the cards had been canceled, as The Telegraph reported the UK payments association APACS as stating. Visible critical data consisted of names, addresses, and credit card data for thousands of people.

Originally, the data was posted on an unsecured server in Vietnam that was utilized by criminal gangs. The Telegraph reported that the server was closed in February; however, the “cached” version of it remained on Google.

Google offers tools that permit Webmasters to ensure that content is not cached or is removed. In this instance, it appears as though whoever leaked the data didn’t use those tools.

A Google spokesperson said in a statement that search engines such as Google do not own the content that is available on the Internet and they do not have the ability to remove content directly from the Web.